As far as most records are concerned, my father would have turned one hundred years old today.
His records say he was born on February 28, 1926. He was born on Leap Year Day, February 29, 1928.
He lived in the City Terrace barrio, in a predominantly Chicano neighborhood during the Great Depression and the early years of the war. Although he was Jewish, he had to fit into the culture, and joined a Pachuco gang. In June 1943, the Zoot Suit Riots spread across Los Angeles into East LA. Navy servicemen moved through the LA neighborhoods and attacked young men for the color of their skin and the clothes they wore. Between the turmoil of the riots and the increasing scrutiny by the law that gangs like his were under, at fifteen, he enlisted in the Navy.
He wasn’t alone in lying about his age. Wartime records later showed that as many as 200,000 underage boys entered military service using altered birthdates. The U.S. Naval Institute article Too Young to Be Scared documents how common it was for teenagers to present themselves as older in order to enlist, and how frequently they were accepted.
He was first assigned to deploy aboard a gunboat but contracted pneumonia before deployment and did not ship out with that crew. The ship was later lost. He was reassigned to the USS Allen (DD-66), a destroyer based at Pearl Harbor, where he served on escort duty in the Pacific theater as a signalman, responsible for visual communications between ships. He was occasionally requested on the bridge by Commanding Officer Lt. Cdr. Riley during operations.
During his service, his mother sent a letter to the Navy reporting his true age. The letter reached Lt. Cdr. Riley aboard the USS Allen, and he was given a choice: return home or remain aboard. He remained aboard the USS Allen until it was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Shipyards in 1946.
After his discharge, he returned to Los Angeles and enrolled at Jepson Art Institute on the GI Bill, where he learned his craft.
February 28, 1926 remained part of his identity. It started with his military records, and the lie continued on his driver’s licenses and passports for decades, and finally when he passed in 2018, on his death certificate. He added those 2 extra years in 1943, and he lived with them for the rest of his life.
Happy birthday, dad.